Have you ever been in love: maybe even for a moment? Perchance you believe love is a lifelong eternity with your soul mate. Perhaps you also think love is that first sip of that so frozen blue raspberry Icee or even that tired, grey sweatshirt from 10 years ago. Love, by definition, is an intense feeling of deep affection: whether that is true or not, I am not sure. I always saw love as the kind in the movies. Love in my head was always pictured as Danny Zuko and me driving away into the clouds and or Johnny Castle lifting me  mid “I’ve had the time of my life.” I never thought love could be as pure as someone else laughing at you after you fell in the ice skating rink. Especially, love never came to me as something that took time. In all the movies, love was immediate, and there were no doubts throughout their vast mind’s. For me, however, love took its time to find me; maybe I am naive and young, but does that make love not count?

I pondered on whether or not people would laugh about how young I am: how this would only be temporary. Then I decided that temporary love is still a perfectly acceptable form of love. Of course, I do not want the passion to be short-lived, but if that is the way my life develops, I am glad I at least had someone to love and someone to love me for these past years of my life. Being able to experience this first hand has been a more important lesson than school could have ever taught me. I have experienced love through happiness, resentfulness, and even hurt. Nobody told me you would find love in something as simple as looking over at the other person while they are driving to Baton Rouge. While the sun beams across their face outlining every imperfection but you do not even notice. It is like seeing a sky full of smoke and still seeing the blue: Looking into a pitch black sky and still finding the stars. No one told me you would recognize love when you are by a crosswalk, and they stick their arm out to keep you from walking into a line of traffic. It never occurred to me watching someone’s chest go up and down with every breath they took would fill your heart with immense delight. The life in them seems almost to feed your soul. Love reaches beyond the boundaries of physical. It is treating someone better than you could ever imagine treating yourself. Love is pushing that person beyond their limits to be able to help the other person succeed between all ways mental, spiritual, and physical. However, love is not always the smiles and or the laughs. It is not always Patrick Verona singing to you mid soccer practice. Sometimes love is you being Rose and the other person being Jack Dawson or vice versa. Love is sometimes seeing the other person break down and you feel abhorrent because so much of your heart is in the person that it is almost as if you are breaking down with them. Seeing the gloss of just one wet tear roll down their face feels like you are being drenched; Like you are in the middle of a rainstorm with no umbrella. Love is finding peace in progress.

You are not always promised to get someone perfect but finding certain pieces about them that are is what truly makes love so unique. Sure, their family life is not fantastic. But do I care? No. There is so many other things about them that is greater. Sometimes I even feel as if I fall short but does he make me feel that way? Never. That is where I find peace. I find peace when I know he sees someone who he wants to make happy whereas I see someone with stubby legs. Where I see myself as someone who overeats ice cream and needs to lose weight, he sees me as someone who he wants to never stop going out to eat with on Saturday nights. He meets me where I stand, and I do the same. I am not sure if we will last forever, but I can only hope that if we don’t someone will make me feel as loved as he does. That is what love is to me. Its finding perfection in an imperfect person no matter the past mistakes, current problems, or future misunderstandings: peace in the progress. They have a quote that says, “If they are for real, you can not walk away,” and you know what? I can not walk away. No matter how many fights, no matter how many tears: I always turn around. I just can not walk away.